A blog about self- acceptance, size/fat acceptance, feminism, and my search for a way to put these things into my life. they say ignorance is bliss, but i think i can be both full of bliss and without ignorance.

Monday, January 26, 2009

so the big accomplishment for the day..... wait for it..... i went to the doctor. yeah, i know people do it all the time. big deal right? except, it's been 5 or 6 years since i've seen a doctor for anything. unless you count the ones i used to see at work. and i was nervous, cause i'm not a big fan of doctors in the first place, and because i really didn't want to have a convo about my weight when i went in because my ears have been bugging me for a month or so. but it went really well actually.

the nurse took my papers and started heading for the scale, i told her i prefer not to be weighed. heart all a flutter, i expected to have to qualify the statement... but she didn't even break stride. just settled me into the exam room. seeing a new doc means loads of questions, and i have a family history that means i check off a whole lot of boxes. and we talked about it. about my grandfather who is the reason i check a good number of boxes. about my dad's mom. about my genes. and i told her, point blank, my family runs large and i'm ok with it. this is the weight i've been at for three years or so. that i do my best to eat well and get a decent amount of movement. that i want to have myself checked for markers of things to come, but that i wasn't really interested in weight loss. and she took some notes, and agreed i should make an appointment for a physical, and that was it.

and i am so relieved right now. i feel ok making the appointment for the physical because i'm not overly concerned about the conversation we'll have when the lab results come back. i went in feeling crummy and nervous, and left still feeling crummy (dammed ears) but much less nervous. and that's a great feeling.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

so, generally speaking i have awesome housemates. h is like a little sister and i enjoy her company, and she has a similar vibe to my own kid sister who's pretty much her same age. a is pretty awesome but our politics and worldviews are radically different and sometimes i'm astounded by the things that come out of her mouth and that she thinks are ok. like the gem of a joke referenced above.

a few nights ago we somehow got on the subject of that joke in particular and the use of rape, and can rape ever be a punchline for a joke of any kind. obviously the joke above falls into that, not ok, catagory. gang rap as a punchline, not funny. saying steven spielburg raped indiana jones... gray area. using rape in stand up to make a joke or satirise the way we view rape, the way the word is ubiquitous, the way we have a blame the victim mentality... i'm ok with that. and so a, my beloved and i were all having this discussion and it was interesting to say the least.

my beloved is a fervent believer in no censorship of any kind. the phrase, you CAN'T say that is one he will fight against. and while he agrees with me that base humor that does nothing more than make rape funny with no attendant social commentaries wrong, he doesn't think the word itself should be forbidden. we used the rape of indiana jones as his example, and going into it i was going nonononono... you can't say that. "but the word itself," he reasoned, "has a meaning that fits exactly what i want to say happened." Spielberg took a childhood icon and violated every precept, ripped away the things that made it great, and generally destroyed it. his argument is that rape is a word, a word we shouldn't use lightly or bandy about in a joking manner, but that it is a word we should use. and i can concede that point. if we use the word rape in a conscious way, perhaps that will give it back some of the power it has to be a serious word. and then statements like, "if you take the last piece of pie i'm going to rape you," won't be said in a flip sort of way.

another bit we talked about was the rape fantasy. which i'm ok with. fantasies about power, struggle, the erotic nature of that struggle are all concepts i can get behind. i think people should be free to explore in their fantasy life anything that gets them hot, including rape. i even think that a select few people with the emotional maturity to handle the realities of the situation should be able to enact said fantasy with their partner. because there you have consent. you have two people discussing the wants and needs and realities and how to recover and when does stop actually mean stop. it's something i toy with myself. from the perp end, not the victim end, but it's there in that dark part of my own fantasies. being able to acknowledge that, and relate to it on a fantasy level, is what makes it a thing i'm likely to never do. because i know the difference between fantasy and reality, and maybe if this type of fantasy were less taboo it could be talked about as opposed to repressed. i'm a big believer in repression of sexuality as a way to seriously and monstrously distort it. and distortion of this kind of fantasy can have serious repercussions.

but i want to know what you think, reader who stumbled on this lengthy post. is rape ok to joke about? is it ok to use as a word? do you think i'm off my tit?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

So, apparently too much pink is damaging to the personalities of little girls, which i causing quite the comment session at feminisitng. and of course any discussion about pink eventually leads to princesses cause, all princesses wear gobs of pink...you know? at least, they do in our culture obsessed with driving home the notion that girls need their men to come along and rescue them. and i had this epiphany, like i do sometimes, about how i used to be that girl. and how i'm not anymore.

i had a relationship that was bad, not as bad as some and certainly not as bad as it could have been. but in the sense that he wreaked havoc with my sense of self worth and made me doubt everything about myself it was bad. not that my home life at the time was any better. my mother and i have never had what i would call a normal, healthy relationship, although now that i don't live with her things are much better. then along comes this guy. he's big and strong, with piercing blue eyes and a smooth tongue, looking like some nordic/germanic warrior and i fell hard and fast. and he knew it. and he took control of it, and me. and i very much wanted him to. i very much believed that he was going to save me from my life, and that we'd go off to the college of his choosing and i'd be his little house wife. thank the gods that didn't happen.

but in the depths of the dysfunction of that relationship, all i wanted was for him to consume me. it's the closest i've ever been to full submission of my will to another. and if the relationship hadn't been as crash and burn as it turned out to be, i might have ended up in a very different place. but it was. and it did.

fast forward almost a decade, and i'm in a new city with the most perfect man for me. we were laying in bed, not that long ago, talking about all manner of things and i asked him if he was glad he'd moved with me. we hadn't know each other very long, let alone been dating for long, when the decision got made. and he looked at me with those dark blue/green eyes of his and said "of course i am. you saved me from, what was turning into, a really hellish life." or something to that effect. reading the bit about princesses, and their desire to be rescued from their lives, made me think of that moment. and while that statement should have had all kinds of subversive undertones, it somehow doesn't. he's a strong man, stronger than he knows i think, and perfectly capable of dealing. the move was my idea and i orchestrated the endeavor, but he funded it and turned it from a pipe dream into a reality. but he credits me as his savior, and in some ways i really like that feeling. in many ways, i also think it feeds into the power exchange dynamic we have, and the occasional and general roll reversals we enjoy.

i'm not really sure where i'm going with this. it doesn't have a point, like some posts i've made. but the thought really made me go humm....